These, too, give meaning to the lives of millions, but
these, too, are inadequate substitutes for the faith that created the West.

For they lack what Christianity gave man—a cause not only to
live for, and die for, but a moral code to live by, with the promise that, at
the end a life so lived, would come eternal life. Islam, too, holds out that
promise.

Secularism, however, has nothing on offer to match that
hope.

Looking back over the centuries, we see what faith has
meant.

When, after the fall of the Roman Empire, the West embraced
Christianity as a faith superior to all others, as its founder was the Son of
God, the West went on to create modern civilization, and then went out and
conquered most of the known world.

[...]

Today, however, with Christianity virtually dead in Europe
and slowly dying in America, Western culture grows debased and decadent, and
Western civilization is in visible decline.

Rudyard Kipling prophesied all this in “Recessional”:

“Far-called our navies melt away; On dune and headland sinks
the fire: Lo, all our pomp of yesterday/Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!”

[...]

And what of America, “God’s country”?

With Christianity excommunicated from her schools and public
life for two generations, and Old and New Testament teachings rejected as a
basis of law, we have witnessed a startlingly steep social decline.

Since the 1960s, America has set new records for abortions,
violent crimes, incarcerations, drug consumption. While HIV/AIDS did not appear
until the 1980s, hundreds of thousands have perished from it, and millions now
suffer from it and related diseases.

Forty percent of U.S. births are out of wedlock. For
Hispanics, the illegitimacy rate is over 50 percent; for African-Americans,
it’s over 70 percent.

Test scores of U.S. high school students fall annually and
approach parity with Third World countries.

A Day That Will Live in Glory

Pray for the Four Cardinals: Burke, Caffarra, Meiser and Brandmuller

“You are the ones who are happy; you who remain within the Church by your Faith, who hold firmly to the foundations of the Faith which has come down to you from Apostolic Tradition. And if an execrable jealousy has tried to shake it on a number of occasions, it has not succeeded. They are the ones who have broken away from it in the present crisis. No one, ever, will prevail against your Faith, beloved Brothers. And we believe that God will give us our churches back some day."